'Downton Abbey’ writer Julian Fellowes suffers cliffhanger

Julian Fellowes, the creator of 'Downton Abbey’, is kept on tenterhooks over
whether ITV will recommission the drama.

The current, second, series is set during the First World War, but Lord Fellowes says: "I can’t imagine taking it much further than the Second World War."Photo: ITV

By Richard Eden

7:26AM BST 16 Oct 2011

It is the most popular drama on television, with almost nine million viewers, but Downton Abbey has not yet been recommissioned.

“They haven’t said they definitely want it yet,” the programme’s creator Julian Fellowes tells Mandrake at the Royal National Institute for the Blind’s gala dinner at the Savoy hotel in London.

Of his bosses at ITV, the writer says: “They are often quite slow at saying whether they want it or not.”

The current, second, series is set during the First World War, but Lord Fellowes says: “I can’t imagine taking it much further than the Second World War. Periods after the war are fascinating because you have all the inventions and innovations that came about as part of the war effort. They were huge periods of industrial and social change.”

His drama outclasses Coronation Street in the ratings, but it will not emulate the soap opera’s longevity. “I can’t see myself taking them on into their sixties because that isn’t very fair on the actors, is it?” Fellowes says.